← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:01]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
This week on a special episode of WebMD's Health Discovered podcast, we're taking a closer look at a common form of lung cancer that accounts for 85% of all cases.
- [00:12]
Janet Freeman Daly
When I first heard the words you have lung cancer, I was in shock.
- [00:18]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
It's a diagnosis that changes everything. So what does it really mean to advocate for yourself when you're living with non small cell lung cancer? Listen to Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:34]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:17]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. I will be streaming again tonight, 8 o' clock in the east on substack on YouTube. Come hang out, just me, ranting, taking your questions, et cetera. I did hop on to the Post speech livestream last night because I was screaming my TV and that felt like a waste of my breath. And so I appreciate Sam and JVL and most importantly General Hertling for accommodating my spleen venting last night. And we've got more of that to come today. Delight. Welcome back to the show. Staff writer at the New Yorker and co host of its Political Scene podcast. Her most recent book is the Divider, co authored with her husband, Peter Baker, at Susan Glasser. Thank God you're here this morning, Susan, because I don't know, I'm at my wit's end.
- [02:03]
Susan Glasser
Honestly, Tim, if you're relying on me for the upbeat, cheery assessment of things, you know, maybe we both need that vacation.
- [02:11]
Tim Miller
I'm not relying on you for upbeat and cheery, but just for coherence. Maybe you at least had to put your thoughts into words for your piece for the New Yorker this morning titled Trump's Case for War fails to mention how to Win It. Among other things, it failed to mention, like, you know, what exactly it is we're doing there, what the plans are for after. And it was there's so many WTF moments of the second Presidency. You Know, it's kind of hard to rank them, but. But this last night was towards the top for me.
- [02:42]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, for me, too. Exactly. I mean, there are so many almost existential questions that Trump at this point raises. For example, you know, can everything be going according to the plan if there is no plan? Although I will, I will say, I will say that Donald Trump, he lied about literally almost everything in that speech. But a few hours before the speech, he did tell the truth when he said, I'm gonna give a little speech and at 9 o' clock tonight and I'm basically just going to tell everybody how great I am. And really, I feel like that was the, shall we call it, the intellectual center of gravity of the piece. You know, his case for war was, as so many things are with him, all of my predecessors failed, especially Barack Hussein Obama, and therefore I am the greatest president of all time. And, you know, I mean, and I'm not even actually being facetious because I think that, you know, if you once you sort of understand the Trump mad libs approach to just about anything, you know, it's always going to include that section, whether it's the economy, whether it is inflation, whether it is a global pandemic, or whether it is launching a war of choice in the Middle East. You know, the fill in the blank section is all of my predecessors did everything wrong and I am right.
- [04:07]
Tim Miller
Yeah, one hole in that case. I mean, there are many. But the most glaring, I think, in this context is that he is one of his own predecessors. You know, like, you were hearing that speech, I was listening to the speech, and it's like, well, you know, and he's doing the thing that the Iran war hawks have been doing about this war, which is that they've been attacking us for 47 years. All other presidents could have dealt with this and they didn't. You know, Trump said a couple weeks ago that one such president had called him and told him he wished he had done it. And, you know, that is, I guess, the case for the war. I mean, there's all this hyperbole about how Israel and the Middle east would be off the map if he had not gotten reelected and he had not done it. It's kind of these delusions of grandeur. But, like, the problem with all that is that nothing has changed with Iran since he was already president once. If anything, the regime had been degraded more because of our attacks from last year and Israel's attacks on their proxies after October 7, the Ayatollah was five years older and he's on his. In his death throes anyway, you know, before we killed him. So it's a nonsensical argument, no matter what. I think that we had to do this now because this has been going on for 47 years. We've always been at war with East Asia. But it's, like, particularly nonsensical since he was already president once and didn't do this.
- [05:30]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, no, that's right. I think that's a really important point. And of course, the reason he didn't do it in the first term is because he had a different set of advisors around him, a different risk framework around him, and people who were still willing to say, like, sir, if you attack Iran and you don't have a plan, they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz and choke off the 20% of the world's energy and lead to an enormous economic catastrophe, which is exactly what we're seeing now. But I think it also, Tim, your point is really important because it gets to the Trump alternate reality bubble, which, again, you know, there's nothing new with Donald Trump. Like, he is who he is. But I think for Americans and for the rest of the world, seeing him operate in this kind of delusional force field is in. In the middle of unleashing consequences that are affecting things all over the world. Right. How is it that Americans have allowed one man to have such global power? They're literally closing universities in Bangladesh one day a week because Donald Trump woke up one morning in Mar A Lago and decided to do something. But, you know, the delusional force field aspect of this, I think, is really cast into sharp relief by a performance like last night. You know, the man just speaks in, you know, sort of empty, exclamation point slogans as if, you know, we're just a sort of stupefied population that's, you know, going to take whatever propaganda the leader dishes out. The guy believes his own bs. He's seriously making the claim, Tim, and he did this in writing yesterday morning. He's seriously making the claim that there has been major regime change in Iran because they now have a new president who is much more moderate and reasonable than the old president, except that the new president and the old president are exactly the same. And he literally did this in writing and nobody calls him on it. I mean, I didn't even see this reflected in most of the news stories yesterday. I'm sorry. But this is a good example of how he has stupefied all of us in Some way. There's so much bullshit, it's very, very hard for people to call it out. But yes, folks, the President of the United States is crazy and delusional. He put in writing that there's a great new president of Iran who he's dealing with. Who's the same fricking guy.
- [08:01]
Tim Miller
Yeah. One of the existential questions that is begat by that speech is like, is he in touch with reality? Is the President of the United States in touch with reality? Because it's unclear if he is. I like to think about this. We all follow this very closely. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, you follow very closely. This was a sense we have primetime address. The war has been raging for a month now. American troops have died. Everybody's gas prices have increased. Right. And so I'm thinking about this last night. Like, what is the person who, you know, is just tuning in for Nashville 911 or Els Beth or whatever, is on network TV nowadays, you know, on prime time on a Wednesday night, and they start watching the speech and they're like, my gas prices have gone up. I understand there's something going on in Iran. I haven't really followed closely exactly what. What did was their takeaway from that speech. Right. It was like Trump was like, you know, at one point he said, you know, we're here to help the people of the Middle East, I guess, and the people of Israel. He goes on a lengthy diatribe about how the other wars have been longer. World War I, World War II, the Korean War. He mentions some objectives, like they can't get nuclear weapons, but doesn't really talk about how that's going to come to pass. I don't know how just a regular person could possibly have gotten anything out of that. I mean, people have to be totally confused. And I think this is reflected in his numbers on this war right now.
- [09:34]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, I assume that the reason they gave the address now, as opposed to when they launched the war, when a speech like this would have been more appropriate a month ago. But I assume that the reason they gave the speech now was exactly because his numbers really have been bottoming out, even for Donald Trump. Yesterday, right before the address, CNN had its new poll, which had him at 64% disapproval, which is actually basically the record for disapproval of a president since modern polling began even. I think, you know, the only person who ever came close was George W. Bush in his second term before the surge in Iraq, who hit 63% at one moment in time. But Donald Trump is bottoming out in the polls. The war is unpopular. People are furious in particular about his handling of the economy. And that's why I was really struck that in this 19 minute speech I noted down it was more than 11 minutes. I think it was actually 13 minutes into the speech, Tim, when Donald Trump mentioned gas prices and the economy, which presumably is the thing that would speak to your casual non news focused viewer on network television who might have stumbled into the speech. I find it hard to believe that they would have stuck with the speech for more than 10 minutes in order for Donald Trump. And by the way, what did he say when he got to the gas prices section of the speech? I thought that was also vintage Trump, which goes to my theory about the Trump mad Libs. Whether it's war in the Middle east or a global pandemic or an election that he doesn't like the results, he always has the same kind of formula and the same recipe that he just fills in. When he got to the gas prices section of the speech, he basically said, don't worry Americans, it will just naturally go back to a lower price. And that to me was like, you know, March 2020 flashback. The coronavirus will just magically go away. It will just magically disappear. And you know, he's, he is the president of magical thinking. Basically.
- [11:50]
Tim Miller
There has been a magical change in oil prices this morning. But it's the other direction that he said as we sit here right now, oil prices surge up to about $112 a barrel. I poked into my Charles Schwab account this morning just to check that out. I would not recommend that for anybody. All things red. The market is crashing. Except I do have one oil fund. It's doing quite well this morning. So if you're living in the Permian Basin, things are okay this morning. Everybody else, I don't think I would check your accounts and I do have to correct the record here. I guess it's Chicago Fire that is on at 9 o' clock on Wednesday nights. Nashville 911 over on NBC. Prime Time is strange these days. I'm out of touch with what's happening. I want to go back to the what exactly it is that we're doing here part of this. There are two kind of things that I saw last night that I think are pretty relevant. One is the list of objectives. The State Department put out a list and the White House put out a list. Problem is, they're not the same. Here's the State Department's list. The destruction of the Air Force Objective one, objective two, destruction of Navy. Objective three, diminish their missile capabilities. Objective four, destruction of factories. Okay, now then the White House, after the speech, put out a four point plan of their own. Destroy their missile arsenal. So it's kind of close. Destruction of Navy. That's kind of close. But then it's destroy terrorist proxies and no nuclear weapon, which are much more ambitious plans than just like destroying shit, you know, and it seems to me that, you know, we've talked about this a bunch this way like that Israel's, I think, objectives are the. Our partner in this war, I think are going to be different than that. So that doesn't augur for success, I don't think, when the State Department and the White House and our partner in this war all have different objectives.
- [13:38]
Susan Glasser
What's amazing, Tim, is that that's also after a month of being beaten up pretty relentlessly every single day off of their inability to get one list that they agree upon. So what's incredible to me is that that's not a miscommunication on day one, but that is 30 days into it when they're getting beat up over exactly this thing of like you idiots can't even tell us what your objectives are and agree on the same list. And then they keep doing it multiple times in the same day. So I think it's pretty notable about the sort of internal dysfunction and incompetence of the team, which, by the way, I know we tend to think of that as like a sort of inside the Beltway thing. Nobody cares about that. But don't underestimate incompetence as a serious factor in the running of this war by the Trump administration. You know, basically they have dismantled a working national security process that has been developed over decades by presidents of both parties. And I can assure you a functional interagency process. And again, I know that's like, you know, dread, like Beltway term, but a functional, whatever you want to call it, group of people who actually knew their shit would have definitely explained to the President in terms that he could understand, and they would have continued to explain it if he disagreed with them, that no, sir, I'm sorry, you're wrong. The Iranians have a very real possibility of closing the Strait of Hormuz. And when they do that, you have given them incredible leverage and the war that you started, they will now be able to dictate terms on. So that's the overriding essential fact of the war, is that, and this is where there are real echoes I Think of what happened to Vladimir Putin when he launched a war against Ukraine, an invasion that he thought was going to lead to a shock and awe displacement in three days of the leadership in Kyiv. He told his military there was no need to do anything other than packaging their dress uniforms for the parade in Kyiv that would inevitably result soon within the week. Instead, they were bogged down in the mud with insufficient fuel and food even to keep going down the road to Kyiv. And, you know, there are many enormous differences.
- [15:56]
Tim Miller
Obviously, they've lost territory since that initial shock and awe.
- [15:59]
Susan Glasser
No, that's correct. That's absolutely correct. But I think it goes to this notion of the kind of incompetence that isolated authoritarian leaders who created create a system around them that prizes loyalty over competence. That's one of the things that we are seeing here in this campaign that I think it's really important to underscore for people. And I take your point. Not only was there no plan, but for all the factors that you just outlined, is it about the nuclear program? Is it about ballistic missiles? Is it about terrorist proxies like Hezbollah, still very much entrenched in Lebanon? That seems to be one of Israel's goal in the conflict is possibly to go after Hezbollah on the ground. All of that argues for conflict that may continue to go on for quite some time, because Donald Trump doesn't necessarily have the ability just to walk away and say, I'm done.
- [16:58]
Tim Miller
And even if our engagement in the conflict doesn't go on for quite some time, who knows what that could entail? And last night, his message on the Strait of Hormuz was, we're gonna be here for two or three more weeks, basically. And then after that, everyone who needs oil from the Strait should. What was the word he used? He should grab it and caress it or something like that. Like, he should go to the Strait.
- [17:24]
Susan Glasser
I like.
- [17:25]
Tim Miller
No, excuse me. Grab it and cherish it. Sorry, I had Access Hollywood. My head. The European country should show courage and grab and cherish the straight afterwards. Who knows how long that could take or what that entails. Or maybe it ends up being China. And the energy that goes through this strait now is traded in, won. I mean, there are just so many potential options. And there was no vision at all for winding it down. I mean, in the case of the Strait, literally, there was no vision. He said, I don't know, we might just leave. We don't need the oil. You guys could figure it out.
- [17:59]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, he was pretty clear about that. And I think the reason for all the escalating rhetoric toward NATO and toward European allies, which he didn't really amplify in the speech, despite having threatened in various quickie phone interviews with European journalists before the speech. He essentially said, I'm going to pull out of NATO in this speech. Then it's a classic Donald Trump move. Then everybody is like, oh, thank God, I'm so relieved he didn't pull out of NATO, which of course he doesn't have the ability to do so. But imagine China being in control of the Strait of Hormuz. And to your point about, you know, passage through the strait being now potentially required that you pay up in one, there are already reports that that's what's happening because actually Iran has not 100% closed the strait. What it has done is it has enabled its own ships to pass through. It has enabled friendly countries who have cargoes on the way, such as China, to pass through. There are reports already that that's how you might be able to get your way through, is to pay your way through in yuan. And that raises an even more ominous prospect. This is something that American strategists have been worried about a lot in recent years, which is that the destabilizing moves of the United States as such an unreliable guarantor that the US what it's risking basically is all the built in privileges of an international system that has been constructed with our own benefit in mind. For example, most of the major global trading occurring in dollars, that's a huge benefit for the US economy. Imagine Donald Trump accelerating the move away from the dollar as the de facto global currency, right? Imagine that.
- [19:46]
Tim Miller
There's a much we have to imagine, right?
- [19:49]
Susan Glasser
Imagine a much closer partnership, both strategic and economic, between our main adversaries in the world, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. That's already been happening with great speed. That's the reason that you have some strategists talking about, you know, if World War III has already started and you know, we just didn't, didn't recognize it quickly enough. And of course, what side is Donald Trump on in that conflict is also not entirely clear. But that's a different conversation I guess.
- [20:18]
Tim Miller
I mean there's a way to look at it now that we are currently in a multi theater war and the wars have been spawned by Putin, Trump, Bibi and MbS. But it's not exactly like that yet as far as Axis powers. But that's not a crazy way to assess the multi theaters that we're in military conflict in right now. All right, y', all, it is officially Hot season down here in New Orleans. None of that scarf nonsense I was seeing at the no Kings rallies in Boston and New Jersey where all my other Bulwark colleagues were D.C. shorts and tees. Now here or I'm into the kind of short sleeve button down look. Right now I'm doing the short sleeve button down look. Not literally in this moment, but that's kind of what I'm wearing around town these days. And I've turned to our friends at Mack Weldon because they've got a bunch of cute looking staples that are fitting the bill. Mack Weldon has updated closet staples like the stretch twill chinos that go with everything and button ups to keep you looking sharp from morning coffee to a dinner date. Even if it's just a dinner date with your spouse, you want to look nice. You can discover upgraded basics, fresh styles and and more@mackweldon.com plus get 20% off your first order of 125 bucks or more with code the Bulwark. I'm really enjoying the Ace collection. They got these comfy sweatshirts. You don't get to see what's going on underneath the chest level here. I feel like anytime I discuss the chest now I've got to make a Brian Gnome joke and I apologize. There's a Brian in the comments section and they maybe took it personally that I was making fun of Brian Gnome's name. And I'm sorry it looks like Bryon. It looks like Brian. I'm sure you had to suffer through this your whole life, but I'll do my best. I'm going to do my best and endeavor to do better in the future. You can only see me from chest up on this here YouTube page. And so you don't know that I'm in the sweat shorts from the Ace collection underneath, but I am. And they are cozy. They're the go to choice for guys who want to look great without even trying to. They're designed to fit your style and the demands of modern life. Get moving with Mack Weldon Comfortable anywhere. Go to mackweldon.com and get 20% off your first order of 125 bucks or more with promo code the Bulwark. That's M A C K W E l d o n.com code the Bulwark. I want to come back to NATO in a second, but just a couple more things on the speech. I was so flabbergasted by it. Just like the fact that he had nothing to say. I mean it was literally a 19 minute truth social post. There was no announcement. There was no plan. There's no objective stated. It wasn't really even clear why we're doing it. Like I said, I mean, he gave some lip service to, like, being there to help. But, like, why now? Why we had to do it now? He didn't really explain. And so I went searching far and wide for people who liked the speech, just maybe get some insight. Mark Levin thought it was perfect, but I didn't get any context on why. But Mark Levin really liked his speech. Rich Lowry at the National Review writes this. I don't know how anyone can listen to that speech and conclude anything other than that Trump is a sincere and passionate Iran hawk. So, I don't know, you wrote a book on him, you went and interviewed with him. Maybe that's what I've been missing. Is he a sincere and passionate Iran hawk? Do you think that explains what's happening right now?
- [23:51]
Susan Glasser
Well, I mean, hearing sincerity from Rich Lowry, the guy who ran an entire edition of National Review magazine about the great danger, the mortal danger that Donald Trump would pose to our democracy, who, you know, come on. No, you know what, though? I will say this. I will say this. Donald Trump doesn't have a foreign policy ideology. I think people often miss this notion that there's some kind of a Trump doctrine. But he does have sort of like, visceral feelings that have been with him for decades. And one of his visceral feelings in his, you know, formative, you know, life's greatest moments stage, which are basically the early 1980s, late 1970s, all those nights at Studio 54 or whatever, you know, this was, I think, when the kind of brain of Donald Trump was. Was formed around the idea that, you know, Iran and this theocracy had sort of screwed the global superpower, the United States of America, and that we ought to basically get rid of it. And that presidents had been far too weak, going back to Jimmy Carter in dealing with this. And so I do think if you listen to him over the last month, the one thing he says with some conviction is that, you know, for 47 years, these people basically have been screwing us, wreaking mayhem, havoc. And, you know, that, by the way, is the awful kind of tragedy of the moment, which is this is something that the vast majority of Americans can agree upon, that, you know, the. The ayatollahs in Tehran have been a rogue regime, oppressing their own people, attacking their neighbors, not just Israel, but their Arab neighbors as well. You know, waging wars of terrorism, fomenting civil wars and unrest throughout the world, by the way, holding hostage the world's oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Absolutely. The kind of global bad actor that if we had a meaningful United Nations Security Council, the whole world should be rising up and saying this is unacceptable. And Donald Trump takes what should be a just and noble cause and fails to pursue it with legitimate means. And that comes back to the one thing we haven't mentioned, which is, you know, the major kind of ultimatum in the speech, which was, you know, very news free was Donald Trump saying, if you do not agree to my terms Iran, then I will bomb you back to the stone Ages and destroy very specifically every single one of the electric generating plants in this country of 93 million people. So you have the President of the United States taking a cause that many Americans might agree with and threatening war crimes. And that is what bombing Iran's electric stations would be. It would be an international war crime. You can't just do that to a country of 93 million people. Never mind if you are the elected leader of a democracy. And so, you know, does anybody care that we have the President threatening war crimes? I don't even know anymore lot there
- [27:04]
Tim Miller
a couple thoughts on that. Number one, those are two good caveats that like Trump is kind of stuck in 70s and 80s brain and like he is a little bit like unfrozen caveman from this era where like the hostage crisis was happening and all that. And so there is that that instinct is there. That is true I guess I'll say though, like to be a sincere and passionate war hawk on Iran, you would have to like know a little bit more about, about like why or what your purpose is, what the goal is. Like it's hard for me to even believe Trump knows whether Iran is Shia or Sunni. I mean, I don't know, it's in one of the videos that he's been watching. But like, I think that is like the, the ridiculous part of this, like the fact that there is he has some coherent like vision about, about Iran. And to that point, like as you said, he's already saying that the new regime is better, but it's the same. It's the Ayatollah's kid and the same president as before. One of the news items I wanted to mention in the spirit of talking about how awful this regime is, Nick Kristof is reporting that he just heard that Iranian authorities today, this morning arrested a human rights lawyer, Nazrin Satuda. She's been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for her courage and leadership advocating for women in Iran. So it is horrible what is happening. The thing is, though, like, we're not offering a vision for helping that human rights lawyer. Right? Like, this is the thing. I mean, I think that we've learned from the mistakes of the early 2000s that, you know, well intentioned efforts to support freedom in various countries don't always work out. But, like, at least that was a coherent objective, right? The idea that, you know, there were these terrible leaders or these autocrats, they're a danger to the world, they're a danger to their own people. We want to give their own people an opportunity to throw off the chains and have freedom. Maybe there was naivete there or bad execution or whatever, but, like, that was a coherent thing. That's not what Trump is offering here. There was like barely even any lip service to that. Like, there's some complaints about how they cracked down on protesters and they mentioned the number of protesters have been killed, but that isn't on the objective list. Freedom for the Iranian people.
- [29:08]
Susan Glasser
Well, it was on the objective list. And actually it's very interesting because that probably was ironically and sort of tragically now the original impetus for why this war. Now, it goes back to early January when the regime was cracking down on a really enormous set of demonstrations that broke out at the end of the year because of the very severe and worsening economic conditions in Iran. You had thousands and thousands of Iranians, many of them young Iranians on the streets, university students, and basically a really fierce crackdown ensued. Whether the number is, I think 7,000 is the number that's so far been able to be verified by human rights groups. Donald Trump used in his State of the Union speech one figure which was 30,000 dead last night. In this speech, he upped it to 45,000 dead. You know, whatever the true number is. A horrific massacre of Iranians by the government had occurred in early January and it led to this Donald Trump social media posting, I believe it was on January 6th, something like that, in which he said, basically, help is on the way. And according to what I've heard from sources in the region, the Israelis saw this and persuaded Trump. From this point on, hey, listen, we are already planning and think there is a need for a fight follow on military campaign to the one that we launched together the previous summer against Iran's nuclear program. Perhaps we should accelerate the timetable of that. Donald Trump, as you know, already had a huge amount of American military assets here in the Western Hemisphere positioned around Venezuela. And so it Took some time. He wasn't able to send military assistance immediately after making that social media posting. But, you know, he. He had this idea that he was just going to threaten Iran with such overwhelming force that he was unleashing along with Israel, that he was going to decapitate the regime and that Iranians were going to go back into the streets so soon after this horrible massacre and somehow topple the government. And so it's even worse than not offering any hope to Iranians about how to change their government. I think that he exploited this tragedy, and then when the goal showed no signs of being able to be plausible, he just backed away from it. And so the people who suffer are the very people in whose name he originally claimed to be launching the campaign.
- [31:47]
Tim Miller
I agree with that so much. And this is something that has frustrated me because this is more of, like, a point of personal privilege, I guess, on all of this. But as somebody who just has been singularly obsessed with Trump for 10 years and how he is, like, the locus of so many of our problems, I had a bunch of friends over the last month who, like, have friends who are either part of the Iranian diaspora or have friends who are part of the Iranian diaspora who are talking about how happy they were about this for good reason, because the Ayatollah has been, you know, just so brutal and cracking down on the Iranian people. And I sympathize with that. But it was. I was always frustrated to say to them, it's like, you're. You don't have a good partner in this project. I'm sorry. Like, I understand that you want to be hopeful, and I don't want to take that away from you. But, like, you don't have a good partner in this project. And now here we are a month later, and the person that was ostensibly going to be helping them find some sort of freedom or some sort of distance from the repressive Ayatollah regime is now saying, I'm going to bomb the country back to the Stone Age. Right. I struggle to. I want to shake the excited Iranian diaspora people and say, see, look, this is what he thinks of you. This is what him and Pete Hagsett think of the country. They don't actually care about you. They will gladly bomb you back to the Stone Age to make themselves feel strong and tough. And it's really tragic about the situation. I don't know if you have anything on that, but I have a breaking news item for you. Do you want to move on to that?
- [33:19]
Susan Glasser
Sure.
- [33:20]
Janet Freeman Daly
When I first heard the words. You have lung cancer. I was in shock.
- [33:27]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
This week on a special episode of Health Discovered we're taking a closer look at a common form of lung cancer that accounts for 85% of all cases.
- [33:37]
Janet Freeman Daly
I'm Janet Freeman Daley and I've been living with non small cell lung cancer since 2011.
- [33:45]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
Non small cell lung cancer. It's a diagnosis that changes everything and yet the conversation around it too often stops at the biology and misses what patients are actually living through every single day.
- [33:58]
Janet Freeman Daly
There are some things you used to be able to do that you can't do anymore. It's easy to become depressed when you're dealing with all those losses. So mental health plays a really big role.
- [34:08]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
So what does it really mean to advocate for yourself when you're living with non small cell lung cancer? Listen to Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:23]
Commercial Narrator
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- [35:23]
Tim Miller
I want to come back to NATO because you wrote about that for the New Yorker and I think there's some other geopolitical elements to this. But first, over at 74 News, Shelby Talcott is reporting right now that the President has informed Pam Bondi that her time as AG is nearing an end, according to multiple sources. There'd also been a CNN report to this effect that he's looking at replacing Pam Bondi with Lee Zeldin. The complaints that the President is citing with Bondi is 1 mishandling of the Epstein files and 2 he's fumed that she hasn't investigated enough of his political opponents. So A lawless DOJ is potentially gonna have a leadership change because the president does not feel like they've been effective enough at lawlessly investigating his foes and covering up his potential associations with Epstein.
- [36:11]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, that's got to send a chill through you, right? When you imagine what is the job interview between Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin, which is basically, do you promise to put in jail my enemies in a way that Pam Bondi has failed to do so? So if this does happen, we should be under no illusions that that is a condition of employment for any future Trump Attorney general. We'll see if that big, brave Republican Senate has anything to say about it. But, you know, they've confirmed Zeldin for his current role as EPA administrator, so it's hard to see that they won't confirm him for this as well. Pam Bondi's name, whether her tenure ends tomorrow or two years from now, her name will certainly go down in history as perhaps the single most destructive attorney general ever in the history of the United States. And I am including John Mitchell on that list, who actually went to jail for his role in the Watergate coverup. Because we are so understandably distracted by things like war in the Middle east and the immigration crackdown that has wreaked havoc around the United States. I think we tend to obscure one of the most damaging aspects of Trump's presidency. And it's exactly what Pam Bondi has been doing at the Justice Department, which is eliminating the idea, the very concept that there is such a thing as independent, impartial justice in this country. And I don't know, it sends a chill through me, the idea that she's not vicious and partisan and personal enough for Donald Trump.
- [37:58]
Tim Miller
She hasn't been enough of a hack for Donald Trump, and she's tried. Maybe his complaint is she's been incompetent in her efforts to go after his political foes. You make a pretty important point there on the confirmation process, because the political environment for Republicans is getting worse and worse every second. Every inch that that oil price chart goes up, it's worse for the Republicans. Midterm prospects and confirmations in the last two years of his presidency might be very challenging. And you can have interim, and we've seen all this, and Trump finds ways around this sort of stuff. But even still, if you want to have the vicious attack dog ahead of the Justice Department, who's going to use every lever they can to go after political foes and go after people that threaten the administration, this would be the Time to put them in place. And so I do think this confirmation process would be very important because you have a little bit of leeway here. You could potentially find four people to oppose a Matt Gaetz type appointee. But if it's not at that level, I think that this is Trump's window to get somebody in that could do his dirty work at the doj.
- [39:15]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I agree with the timing on that one. I absolutely do.
- [39:18]
Tim Miller
We don't have to pour one out for old Pambandi, though. You know, head on back to Florida. I guess she'll be on the speaking circuit at the Villages. I'm not sure exactly what else is in her future, but she and Kristi
- [39:29]
Susan Glasser
Noem gonna do joint appearances. The two fired ladies of the Trump Cabinet. I mean, you know, the bimbo vacation tour.
- [39:36]
Tim Miller
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had to do it.
- [39:39]
Susan Glasser
Well, I mean, look, you should point out, honestly, like, the caricature of femininity that has passed for the only acceptable women to play important roles in Trump' world, aside from Susie Wiles. And that's a very interesting separate conversation we can have. But, you know, look at the physical transformation demanded of the women who are required to perform in public for Donald Trump. The, you know, Caroline Levitt, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondies of the world. You know, it's fascinating to me what the maga optics, you know, tell you about how Donald Trump thinks about women, which is that you can basically dress them up like Barbies, and as long as they do whatever you tell them to do, he's okay with it.
- [40:30]
Tim Miller
But there have been some pretty incompetent men also in the cabinet. I guess it's worth noting Nutlik is still there. Hagsaw is not exactly knocking it out of the park. Could go down the list. That's the two women cabinet members that are out. Susie Wiles wasn't on my topic list today, but you piqued my interest. Well, what did you have in mind about Susie Wiles? What do you think is happening there?
- [40:50]
Susan Glasser
Oh, no more. Just that she has not been as much of a public figure. She hasn't been required to undergo what appears to be so many physical transformations in order to serve at Trump's side.
- [41:02]
Tim Miller
So that was all pretty ominous stuff happening at the doj, but don't let the door hit you on the way out. Pam Bondi.
- [41:10]
Janet Freeman Daly
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Janet Freeman Daly
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- [42:13]
Tim Miller
I want to go back to just the geopolitical implications of the war and talk both about some stories out of Europe and Asia. You wrote, I guess last week Donald Trump is breaking up with Europe. That was, as you mentioned, advanced in the ensuing week where Trump was basically threatening to leave. NATO doesn't do that in the speech last night, but does insult them and say basically it's time for you to show courage. You got to step up, you got to do this straight. And then there's this line from a staffer to Politico last night after the speech. This is a Trump administration staffer. It's like these motherfuckers always talk about article five, article five, article five, article 5, article 5. Okay, well, Iran has been blowing up our soldiers and ripping their wings off for, you know, half a century. And we finally responded and now they're going after all our major non NATO allies and the United States. And you guys are not only saying we're not going to help, but you're closing your airspace to us. Really. Former Republican Congressman Peter Meijer tweeted that with this it would behoove our NATO allies to appreciate this sentiment is very widely shared, included among erstwhile boosters of the transatlantic relations. Man. A lot to unpack there, but wondering what your thoughts are.
- [43:30]
Susan Glasser
Well, I suppose it would be sort of trulishly rules oriented of me to point out that the Trump administration, if it's actually claiming that this is a defensive war under the terms of the NATO alliance, which is purely a defensive alliance, what they should have done is gone to the North Atlantic Council and asked our allies to help the United States and to invoke the provisions in the treaty. The quote suggests that we believe that this is an American attack on Iran that is Justified because we have, in fact, been under attack by Iran for decades. And if that's the case, the US should have and did not formally ask for help from the NATO allies. So, you know, as always, there's a strong element of gaslighting here. Really remarkable that the guy who has spent the last decade in public life trashing both our allies and this specific alliance in very, very explicit terms, is now absolutely furious that the person he's been kicking the shit out of isn't rushing to, you know, leap to his support when he goes after another target to start beating up, you know. And so it is the bully boy mentality that I think has spilled over. It's not just Donald Trump's mentality, but it does represent, you know, a big part of how many Republicans now appear to view the world. So that's one thing. It's a, it's a misunderstanding of the role of NATO. It's a defensive alliance. And specifically, by the way, that defensive alliance exists only in, in a defined geographic area. And the reason that was put in the founding acts of NATO was at the insistence of the United States itself, because it didn't want to be on the hook for going to war alongside European colonial powers outside of Europe and the North Atlantic. That was literally a revision insisted upon by the United States so that it wouldn't have to go to war, for example, in the Middle East. And look, just a few years after NATO was founded, you know, not to get too historical in our historical world, but let's talk about the 1956 Suez crisis. Great example of European military action in the Middle east that the United States refused to have anything to do with for exactly this reason. So, you know, again, I just, I think that in many ways, right, like the US just, of course, Donald Trump, you know, give him a pop quiz on the Suez crisis and I'm sure he couldn't even name.
- [46:02]
Tim Miller
The whole thing is crazy. It's almost like my blood pressure spiked when I saw week because I was like, how do I even, how do you even argue with this? It's so crazy. It's like we menaced Denmark and like threatened to invade their territory a couple months ago. And now you're telling me that Denmark needs to send their 20 year olds to Iran to risk their lives because Iran was behind the USS Cole bombing 26 years ago. It's insane. Like before these kids were even born. Like, it's just crazy. It's great. You can't possibly imagine a counter situation where Germany decides to decapitate the Ayatollah, and then gas prices spike and Donald Trump's like, we're going to come help you. Like, the whole thing is ridiculous. It was a choice, warm choice. We didn't ask them on the front end. And we're dealing with the result, the results of that. Here's how Donald Tusk put it. Leader out of Poland. The threat of NATO's breakup, easing sanctions on Russia, a massive energy crisis in Europe, halting aid for Ukraine and blocking the loan for Kiev by Orban, Hungary's blocking it, EU loan to, to Ukraine. It all looks like Putin's dream plan. How widespread of a view do you sense that is among our friends in Europe?
- [47:15]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a consensus view among our friends in Europe right now, especially with Putin's other leading apologist in Europe, Viktor Orban. In the middle of an election campaign in which the United States is openly campaigning on his behalf, you have both Marco Rubio and JD Vance literally going there to campaign essentially for Viktor Orban. You know, Putin has also been the economic beneficiary of this conflict and is going to receive literally something like a 50 plus billion dollar windfall, even if the war were to end in the next few weeks, because we've temporarily lifted sanctions on some of the Russian oil in order to relieve pressure on the energy market, which, by the way, didn't work. But the result is that Trump's war is now funding Putin's war. At the same time, he continues to belittle Ukraine and to say very explicitly, Ukraine is not our war. I noticed with alarm that although you could see that was something Trump believed, he's been wary of actually explicitly saying that until now, until this conflict with Iran. And in the last week, both, both the President and Marco Rubio have come out and said Ukraine is not our war in ways that are a big shift in American foreign policy and probably an underappreciated spillover effect from the war in Iran.
- [48:48]
Tim Miller
Mark Ruda, Secretary General of Data, is coming next week. Any sense for what is happening there? And he's been pretty. He's worked. Trump maybe would be the way to put it. He's buttered him up. He called him daddy at one point. Do you have any thoughts on what to expect?
- [49:03]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, putting aside the cringe factor there, Tim Rutte has been, along with Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, the sort of designated Trump whisperer among the Europeans, the good cop. And Rutte, I'm sure, is here to grovel basically to do whatever he can to stop Trump from publicly damaging the alliance even more. I'm sure that he and others are insisting to Trump that they're working very hard to assemble a kind of international coalition that would ultimately take charge of the security problems in the Strait of Hormuz. Although the Europeans so far have been very clear that that could occur only after the cessation of hostilities. I do think it's notable. I saw a level of panic yesterday in advance of the speech that I haven't seen before from serious NATO actors. Even Republicans here in the US who support the war in Iran, but also support NATO, they seem to be signaling that they were very alarmed by Trump's rhetoric before the speech, threatening to pull out of NATO. But a lot of Europeans understand that Trump has already sort of functionally destroyed the Article 5 guarantee that is at the core of NATO. And by the way, that's been my view that from the moment of Trump's reelection in 2024, that Vladimir Putin understood very clearly that Article 5 was a dead letter because it's something that's written into law in a treaty that's been passed by the United States. But in reality, Article 5 depends upon the psychological condition of everybody believing that you will actually go to war to defend your allies if they don't believe that it's not a deterrent. And, and let's be real. If tomorrow Putin ordered Russian troops across the tiny river that separates Russia from Estonia, do you believe that the United States would actually go to war on Estonia's behalf or do much of anything at all before Russia swallowed up this tiny Baltic country? I mean, I think we understand the answer is no. And so in many ways, Donald Trump has already be effectively pulled out of NATO.
- [51:22]
Tim Miller
Just really quick on Asia, I just want to mention how bad the crisis is among our Asian allies. South Korean president today urged citizens to save every drop of fuel because of their coming energy crisis. The Japanese Ministry of Finance is intervening in fuel markets to offset the devaluation of the yen. The Indian rupee plunged 10%. They have their worst annual decline in 14 years. And there's a real global economic crisis coming. And, and it's going to hit a lot of our friends who we are already threatening with tariffs and already hitting with tariffs. And I go back to that political quote about our non NATO allies. It kind of seems to me like the allies that we're going to have left at the end of this are Israel, the uae, Saudi and El Salvador and maybe Hungary. We'll see how that election goes.
- [52:07]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, friends don't let friends ruin their economy. I mean, it's again, I think for so many people around the world, the shock here is realizing that America has become so dysfunctional that one cranky senior citizen in Mar a Lago can determine the fate of their economy thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.
- [52:34]
Janet Freeman Daly
When I first heard the words you have lung cancer, I was in shock.
- [52:40]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
This week on a special episode of Health Discussions discovered we're taking a closer look at a common form of lung cancer that accounts for 85% of all cases.
- [52:51]
Janet Freeman Daly
I'm Janet Freeman Daly and I've been living with non small cell lung cancer since 2011.
- [52:58]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
Non small cell lung cancer, it's a diagnosis that changes everything and yet the conversation around it too often stops at the biology and misses what patients are actually living through through every single day.
- [53:11]
Janet Freeman Daly
There are some things you used to be able to do that you can't do anymore. It's easy to become depressed when you're dealing with all those losses. So mental health plays a really big role.
- [53:22]
Podcast Host (Health Discovered)
So what does it really mean to advocate for yourself when you're living with non small cell lung cancer? Listen to health discovered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [53:38]
Tim Miller
Rapid fire through a couple other things. Domestically, pretty important quote from Trump yesterday. It's, I think going to be showing up in a lot of Democratic ads. I just want to read to you. This was before the speech was during a press conference. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have all these other people who are fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You got to let the states take care of daycare. And they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. We can't pay for Medicare, Medicaid, daycare. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. So very explicitly yesterday saying that in part because of the war in Iran and I mean ton of costs, we have had very expensive planes get bombed. It's a very costly war to the government in addition to the American people. And because of that, we can't pay for healthcare and daycare services. I don't think that's gonna really go over that well politically.
- [54:34]
Susan Glasser
No, I don't imagine it will. Although I actually have a theory of the case here and I recognize it's unprovable.
- [54:40]
Tim Miller
Please.
- [54:41]
Susan Glasser
But if you listen to the quote and where he ends up with Medicare, my theory is that he didn't mean to say daycare and that he actually confused daycare and Medicare all along through that quote because he says, like the states, you know, we're not allowed to do it. It's the states. Like, like, again, it doesn't really change the political point perhaps that you're making, but it makes it somewhat worse if the president of the United States actually,
- [55:06]
Tim Miller
well, we lumped them all together in that last quote. Not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. I think you'll be seeing that in the swing states. A lot of complaints about the Democratic pushback on this regime. And so when they do things effectively, I think it's worth highlighting. So this DHS shutdown, we have a deal now that it's about to end. Mike Johnson has folded, possibly the weakest speaker in American history. There's a lot of superlatives to be handed out in this moment. The most corrupt attorney general, the weakest speaker of the House. But one thing I think that has gotten missed a little bit as far as part of the win here for Democrats is during this shutdown period, the, the administration has had to spend a lot of the money that was allocated for DHS during the bill last year. And just for example here, this is from Politico this morning. If DHS continues to siphon that cash at the current rate, funding could run out as soon as June. This was part of the package for border support that was going to Kristi Noem's planes and also the masked agents in the streets of Minnesota, et cetera. But, but the Republicans now are going to have to go back to get more funding for the deportation program. They're going to have to go back and jam through a reconciliation bill that funds the war. The ICE agents and I don't know, maybe they'll try to throw in some rules about election voting in there. But man, the politics of that were going to be very hard two months ago. The politics of that are unimaginably hard now. To think that when people are feeling an acute crisis in their pocketbooks, that's the one thing that we're going to try to do this year in reconciliat has fund the ICE agents in the war.
- [56:53]
Susan Glasser
Absolutely correct. But the only point I would make is that what worries me right now is that Donald Trump, already historically unpopular, thinking about that 64% disapproval rating in that CNN poll, he seems to be increasingly detaching from any interest in the normal pressures that politics would impose upon him. And the constraints that that kind of unpopularity would impose on any other kind of president. So I worry that he's detaching in a way from our political system. And once again, if these Republican elected officials don't break with him, you know, what is the consequence of that unpopularity and any other moment in our lifetime, any president, Democrat, Republican, with this levels of public dissatisfaction, both broadly with the country and specifically with his leadership, you would see Republicans in the Senate and the House just absolutely refusing to do anything that that president wanted. And we haven't seen that case. And frankly, it's exhausting. Every time you listen, I'm sure you have them on the show or you're on ms, you know, with these people. And they're, you know, they're congressional reporters, God bless them, they do great work. But they always, how many times a week do they come on and they say, well, you know, I'm picking up a lot of discontent with those Republican on the fence. And I think, you know, it's not happening yet, Tim, but I feel like next week we really could see them start to break. It's like, come on, right? I mean, this is, we've been living this with this too long to be prepared to say that in June, you know, they're absolutely going to wake up and look at this political reality and tell Donald Trump to screw off.
- [58:40]
Tim Miller
I agree with that. Okay. I knew we were going to be very dour today and negative. So I have, at the end of the show, I have a we can do cool things question mark section. Your colleague David Kirkpatrick, who I've had on the show, wrote a very cool feature piece about this CIA operative, former CIA operative, that actually did the work that Donald Trump said that past administrations weren't doing, which is stopping Iran from getting the bomb. And it's a very cool caper story. We'll link to it. I recommend people read it. It's about how he recruited a scientist in Iran to disrupt the program. And, and on the science front, on the home front, Artemis 2 up to the stars, beyond the stars, as Donald Trump said, not quite, but it is heading around the dark side of the moon. That's pretty cool. It was cool for my daughter to get to watch that yesterday. So there you go. Do you have anything on either of those items on the America can do cool things still question mark topic?
- [59:35]
Susan Glasser
Absolutely. I watched every minute of the launch, the Artemis launch with my husband, Peter Baker, who is a huge space junkie. He has could have predicted that.
- [59:46]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [59:46]
Susan Glasser
He has read literally the Memoirs of like every American astronaut who's ever gone into space. And, you know, both of us were really struck by, you know, again and again, the sort of commentary was, you know, at a time when Americans are bruised, when there's so much that divides us, does this harken back to some kind of different moment in time? Peter was pointing out to me, you can go back to launch in December of 1968, probably the worst year in recent American history. Assassinations and divisions over the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon and the campaign and the like. And yet that was still something that brought America together. You know, I don't know that this does anything at all about our political divisions, but, you know, it's a reminder about big ambition. And, you know, one of the things that feels so painful to me that it feels like the US has lost on some level is being the country of the future. And that that in some ways, more than anything, any specific thing, was what powered the US through its incredible run in the post. Post World War II era as this country of the future, as a country that not just had democratic ideals, but that was harnessing the power of individual innovation and freedom to do things that other countries around the world couldn't and wouldn't do. And I feel like that's what's been lost. Ask our children. Look at these poor gen zers. They see a world that's been defined since they can remember with. With constraint, with division, with economic insecurity. These are kids, brilliant kids, wonderful kids coming out of universities and they can't get jobs. And that's not the America of JFK that first went to the moon. So it's inspiring. It's nerve wracking, by the way. You just really sit there and watch the whole thing. The first news event I remember of the space program was the Challenger when I was in high school. So I was a little bit anxious watching it. But it's a great thing and a big accomplishment.
- [62:06]
Tim Miller
I love that melancholy tinge with the inspiration there. No, no, that's right. That is appropriate. That is Bulwark and Susan Glasser and Tim Miller podcast. Appropriate. And so we'll leave it with that. She's over at the New Yorker. Check out her latest. And we'll be seeing you again soon. Who knows what imaginable horrors will await us the next time we're together.
- [62:27]
Susan Glasser
Susan, you're the one who said horrors.
- [62:30]
Tim Miller
Appreciate you very much. We've got another Negative Nancy coming tomorrow, so we'll see you all then. Peace. But he thinks he'd blow our minds. There's a starman waiting in the sky.
- [62:52]
Susan Glasser
He's telling us not to
- [62:55]
Tim Miller
The Borg Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [63:07]
Commercial Narrator
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